books tagged “1900s”

The Ambassadors
by Henry James

ISBN 1853260347 (1-85326-034-7)
Softcover, Wordsworth Edition

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Book summary:
The Ambassadors, which Henry James considered his best work, is the most exquisite refinement of his favorite theme: the collision of American innocence with European experience. This time, James recounts the continental journey of Louis Lambert Strether--a fiftysomething man of the world who has been dispatched abroad by a rich widow, Mrs. Newsome. His mission: to save her son Chadwick from the clutches of a wicked (i.e., European) woman, and to convince the prodigal to return to Woollett, Massachusetts. Instead, this all-American envoy finds Europe growing on him. Strether also becomes involved in a very Jamesian "relation" with the fascinating Miss Maria Gostrey, a fellow American and informal Sacajawea to her compatriots. Clearly Paris has "improved" Chad beyond recognition, and convincing him to return to the U.S. is going to be a very, very hard sell. Suspense, of course, is hardly James's stock-in-trade. But there is no more meticulous mapper of tone and atmosphere, nuance and implication. His hyper-refined characters are at their best in dialogue, particularly when they're exchanging morsels of gossip. Astute, funny, and relentlessly intelligent, James amply fulfills his own description of the novelist as a person upon whom nothing is lost. --Rhian Ellis [via]
More editions of The Ambassadors:
- The Ambassadors: ISBN 3895082309 (3-89508-230-9)
  Hardcover, Konemann
- The Ambassadors: ISBN 1853260347 (1-85326-034-7)
  Softcover, Wordsworth Edition
via
Five Children and It
by Edith Nesbit

ISBN 1853261246 (1-85326-124-6)
Softcover, Lb May & Assoc Inc

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Book summary:
Its eyes were on long horns like a snail's eyes... it had ears like a bat's ears, and its tubby body was shaped like a spider's and covered with thick, soft fur... and it had hands and feet like a monkey's. 'It' was the Psammead, the grumpy sand-fairy that could, if in the mood, grant a wish a day. When the five children befriend him they find that each wish granted often has a sting in its tail. Golden guineas are too difficult to spend, wings let them down in a most inconvenient way, and when they wish for Red Indians, the children forget that they can sometimes be a little warlike. [via]
More editions of Five Children and It:
- Five Children and It: ISBN 1850899126 (1-85089-912-6)
  Hardcover, Ulverscroft Large Print Books
- Five Children and It: ISBN 1853261246 (1-85326-124-6)
  Softcover, Lb May & Assoc Inc
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Frances Hodgson Burnett's the Secret Garden
by Frances Hodgson Burnett, Jill Muller

ISBN 1593082770 (1-59308-277-0)
Softcover, Barnes & Noble

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Book summary:
Mistress Mary is quite contrary until she helps her garden grow. Along the way, she manages to cure her sickly cousin Colin, who is every bit as imperious as she. These two are sullen little peas in a pod, closed up in a gloomy old manor on the Yorkshire moors of England, until a locked-up garden captures their imaginations and puts the blush of a wild rose in their cheeks; "It was the sweetest, most mysterious-looking place any one could imagine. The high walls which shut it in were covered with the leafless stems of roses which were so thick, that they matted together.... 'No wonder it is still,' Mary whispered. 'I am the first person who has spoken here for ten years.'" As new life sprouts from the earth, Mary and Colin's sour natures begin to sweeten. For anyone who has ever felt afraid to live and love, The Secret Garden's portrayal of reawakening spirits will thrill and rejuvenate. Frances Hodgson Burnett creates characters so strong and distinct, young readers continue to identify with them even 85 years after they were conceived. (Ages 9 to 12) [via]
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The House of Mirth
by Edith Wharton

ISBN 1593081537 (1-59308-153-7)
Softcover, Barnes & Noble

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Book summary:
"The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth," warns Ecclesiastes 7:4, and so does the novel by Edith Wharton that takes its title from this call to heed. New York at the turn of the century was a time of opulence and frivolity for those who could afford it. But for those who couldn't and yet wanted desperately to keep up with the whirlwind, like Wharton's charming Lily Bart, it was something else altogether: a gilded cage rather than the Gilded Age.
One of Wharton's earliest descriptions of her heroine, in the library of her bachelor friend and sometime suitor Lawrence Selden, indicates that she appears "as though she were a captured dryad subdued to the conventions of the drawing room." Indeed, herein lies Lily's problem. She has, we're told, "been brought up to be ornamental," and yet her spirit is larger than what this ancillary role requires. By today's standards she would be nothing more than a mild rebel, but in the era into which Wharton drops her unmercifully, this tiny spark of character, combined with numerous assaults by vicious society women and bad luck, ultimately renders Lily persona non grata. Her own ambivalence about her position serves to open the door to disaster: several times she is on the verge of "good" marriage and squanders it at the last moment, unwilling to play by the rules of a society that produces, as she calls them, "poor, miserable, marriageable girls.
Lily's rather violent tumble down the social ladder provides a thumbnail sketch of the general injustices of the upper classes (which, incidentally, Wharton never quite manages to condemn entirely, clearly believing that such life is cruel but without alternative). From her start as a beautiful woman at the height of her powers to her sad finale as a recently fired milliner's assistant addicted to sleeping drugs, Lily Bart is heroic, not least for her final admission of her own role in her downfall. "Once--twice--you gave me the chance to escape from my life and I refused it: refused it because I was a coward," she tells Selden as the book draws to a close. All manner of hideous socialite beasts--some of whose treatment by Wharton, such as the token social-climbing Jew, Simon Rosedale, date the book unfortunately--wander through the novel while Lily plummets. As her tale winds down to nothing more than the remnants of social grace and cold hard cash, it's hard not to agree with Lily's own assessment of herself: "I have tried hard--but life is difficult, and I am a very useless person. I can hardly be said to have an independent existence. I was just a screw or a cog in the great machine I called life, and when I dropped out of it I found I was of no use anywhere else." Nevertheless, it's even harder not to believe that she deserved better, which is why The House of Mirth remains so timely and so vital in spite of its crushing end and its unflattering portrait of what life offers up. --Melanie Rehak [via]
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Kenneth Grahame's the Wind in the Willows
by Kenneth Grahame

ISBN 0030638623 (0-03-063862-3)
Hardcover, Henry Holt & Co

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More editions of Kenneth Grahame's the Wind in the Willows:
- Kenneth Grahame's the Wind in the Willows: ISBN 0030638623 (0-03-063862-3)
  Hardcover, Henry Holt & Co
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A Room With a View
by E. M. Forster

ISBN 140432755X (1-4043-2755-X)
Softcover, Indypublish.Com

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Book summary:
The graded readers in this series aim to provide learners of English with a pleasurable reading experience. The series, which should appeal to a wide age range, exposes students to a variety of styles and kinds of English and the books contain puzzles and exercises based on the text. The grading system is based on lexical controls, structural controls and guidelines on sentence length and complexity. Books in Level 3 have a vocabulary of 1000 words. [via]
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Room With a View
by Lucy Fur

ISBN 1932595163 (1-932595-16-3)
Hardcover, Feral House

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Book summary:

A motel, a camera and Lucy Fur. Dreamy.Jimmy McDonough, author of Shakey: Neil Youngs Biography and Big Bosoms and Square Jaws: The Biography of Russ Meyer
The young, buxom Burlesque Queen of Portland, Oregon, has begun a distinctive photographic career by posing in a vanishing breed of unique motel room environ-ments across the country.

Writes Lucy in her introduction, Room With a View is not merely a pin-up book: it is as much about the room as it is about me. I think of myself as a fixture in that room, like a lamp or a chair. The kind of motel rooms that particularly attracted me had wood paneling, forgotten 60s- and 70s-era oil paintings, strange lighting, fantasy themes, tiled bathrooms, wacky wallpaper, and no outside view. All the photo-graphs are in some way a reaction to the established lexicon of pin-up sexy.

Room With a View contains nearly one hundred of Lucy Furs photographs, bound handsomely with an inlaid photograph surrounded by an elegant embossed cloth binding.
[via]
More editions of Room With a View:
- Room With a View: ISBN 1932595163 (1-932595-16-3)
  Hardcover, Feral House
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A Room With a View
by Malcolm Bradbury, E. M. Forster

ISBN 0141183292 (0-14-118329-2)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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This Edwardian social comedy explores love and prim propriety among an eccentric cast of characters assembled in an Italian pensione and in a corner of Surrey, England. A charming young English woman, Lucy Honeychurch, faints into the arms of a fellow Britisher when she witnesses a murder in a Florentine piazza. Attracted to this man, George Emerson--who is entirely unsuitable and whose father just may be a Socialist--Lucy is soon at war with the snobbery of her class and her own conflicting desires. Back in England she is courted by a more acceptable, if stifling, suitor, and soon realizes she must make a startling decision that will decide the course of her future: she is forced to choose between convention and passion. The enduring delight of this tale of romantic intrigue is rooted in Forster's colorful characters, including outrageous spinsters, pompous clergymen and outspoken patriots. Written in 1908, A Room With A View is one of E.M. Forster's earliest and most celebrated works. [via]
More editions of A Room With a View:
- A Room With a View: ISBN 0141183292 (0-14-118329-2)
  Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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The Wind in the Willows
by Kenneth Grahame, Gardner McFall

ISBN 1593082657 (1-59308-265-7)
Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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Book summary:
Inspired by correspondence from Wind in the Willow's author Kenneth Grahame to his young son, award-winning illustrator Michael Foreman took up paint and brush to follow Mole, Ratty, Mr. Badger, and Toad through another edition of this well-loved kids classic.
Grahame's time-honored story, an adventure-filled idyll that meanders across a lovingly described English countryside, cemented its status as a masterpiece generations ago. But this newest edition adds some noteworthy extras: the unabridged text includes two chapters that don't appear in some modern versions ("The Pipers at the Gates of Dawn" and "Wayfarers All"), and the book closes with reproductions of two of Grahame's actual letters to his son Alistair ("My darling Mouse") in 1907, written on ornate, old-timey stationery from two Cornwall hotels and recounting one of Toad's first adventures (which Toad fans will recognize as the train-assisted escape of a certain "washerwoman").
These inclusions alone might merit a new edition, but Foreman's illustrations stand shoulder to shoulder with those of previous Winds artists (among them Ernest Shepard, the original illustrator, and Arthur Rackham, both of whom Foreman modestly stands "in awe" of). The lively, full-color illustrations appear generously throughout the book, as they convincingly capture both the story's small moments (like the washerwoman's weeping, for one) and more explosive events (like the storming of Toad Hall). (All ages) --Paul Hughes [via]
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The Wind in the Willows
by Michael Hague, Kenneth Grahame

ISBN 0030562945 (0-03-056294-5)
Hardcover, Ariel Books : Holt, Rinehart and Winston

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Book summary:
"[Mole] thought his happiness was complete when, as he meandered aimlessly along, suddenly he stood by the edge of a full-fed river. Never in his life had he seen a river before--this sleek, sinuous, full-bodied animal, chasing and chuckling, gripping things with a gurgle and leaving them with a laugh, to fling itself on fresh playmates that shook themselves free, and were caught and held again." Such is the cautious, agreeable Mole's first introduction to the river and the Life Adventurous. Emerging from his home at Mole End one spring, his whole world changes when he hooks up with the good-natured, boat-loving Water Rat, the boastful Toad of Toad Hall, the society- hating Badger who lives in the frightening Wild Wood, and countless other mostly well-meaning creatures. Michael Hague's exquisitely detailed, breathtaking color illustrations on almost every generous spread--along with Kenneth Grahame's elegant, delightfully old-fashioned characterizations of the animals--make this book a wonderful read-aloud. Grahame's The Wind in the Willows has enchanted readers for four generations, and this lavishly illustrated gift edition is perhaps the finest around. (All ages, or 9 to 12) [via]
More editions of The Wind in the Willows:
- The Wind in the Willows: ISBN 0805002138 (0-8050-0213-8)
  Hardcover, Holt & Company, Henry
- The Wind in the Willows: ISBN 0030562945 (0-03-056294-5)
  Hardcover, Ariel Books : Holt, Rinehart and Winston

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